The list Patanjali gives at sutra 2.30 is not his invention, and the clearest evidence is that Jainism holds the same five vows in almost the same order. The Tattvartha Sutra, the closest thing Jainism has to a universal creed, defines the vow as abstention from violence, falsehood, stealing, unchastity and possession, and Jain mendicants take these five as the mahavratas, the great vows, in full strictness; the laity take gentler forms called anuvratas. The overlap is too exact to be a coincidence. Both lists descend from the shared ascetic culture of ancient India, the world of wandering renouncers from which Buddhism also drew its five precepts, four of which match.
Comparing the traditions shows what each valued. Jainism placed ahimsa so absolutely first that the other four vows are sometimes read as its elaborations: lying, stealing, sexual predation and acquisitiveness are all ways of doing harm. Patanjali keeps the same priority, and his commentators derive the ordering the same way. The divergence is in the fifth member, where Buddhism substitutes abstention from intoxicants for non-possessiveness, a difference that marks Buddhism's middle way against the sharper renunciation the Jain and yogic lists both encode. The five yamas are thus a window into the common inheritance of three religions.